Movements and struggles

In 1893, a Pulaya man rode a bullock cart down a forbidden road.

Ayyankali, from Venganoor near Thiruvananthapuram, wore a turban and drove his cart openly along a road his caste was not allowed to use. Carts like his, and roads like that one, were kept for the upper castes. When a band of Nairs came out to fight, Ayyankali and his friends drove them off.

It was the first of his challenges for his people's equality. It is remembered as the Villuvandi Samaram, the bullock-cart struggle.

They asked only to walk the roads around a temple.

From 30 March 1924 until November 1925, the Vaikom Satyagraha claimed, without violence, the right of oppressed castes to use the public roads around the Vaikom Mahadeva Temple in Travancore. Its leaders were arrested. Periyar, brought to Vaikom by George Joseph, spent 74 of his 114 days there in jail. In the end three of the roads were opened to all castes; the Regent refused to open the eastern road.

Statues of five of its leaders stand at Valiyakavala, Vaikom.

Every 1 January, lakhs of people come to a pillar near Pune.

It marks the battle of Koregaon, fought on 1 January 1818. On 1 January 1927, Dr B. R. Ambedkar visited it at a meeting organised by Shivram Janba Kamble, a writer and activist from a nearby village who had done much to keep the site from being forgotten. Ambedkar returned every year, and his visits are said to have made the pillar widely known among Dalits.

On the 200th anniversary, in 2018, clashes broke out between Dalit groups and Marathas; one person died.

Ambedkar drank from the tank, and the marchers followed.

On 19 and 20 March 1927, the Depressed Classes of Kolaba district met at Mahad, with Dr B. R. Ambedkar presiding. The municipality had opened the Chawdar Tank to the Untouchables, but they still could not use it. On the second day the delegates marched to the tank and drank. Caste Hindus attacked them, and about twenty were badly hurt.

Five attackers went to prison for four months. The fight for the tank went on that December.

On 25 December 1927, they burned the Manusmriti.

That August the Mahad Municipality had taken back its decision to open the Chawdar Tank. A committee led by Dr B. R. Ambedkar called a satyagraha at the tank to win back the right claimed in March. A court barred the leaders from going to the tank. At the conference on 25 December, passages of the Manusmriti were read out and condemned, and the book was burned. Some 3,884 delegates signed up to offer satyagraha.

Ten years later, the Bombay High Court dismissed the caste Hindus' appeal.

For a year, the temple stayed shut rather than let them in.

The Depressed Classes of Nasik gave the Kalaram Temple trustees notice: open the temple to us, or a satyagraha begins. On 2 March 1930, Dr B. R. Ambedkar presided over a conference and procession of about 15,000 people. The gates stayed closed. From the next day, men and women picketed all four gates in batches, with thousands more waiting their turn.

Ambedkar wrote that the aim was to establish the right of the Untouchables to enter Hindu temples.

On 14 October 1956, Ambedkar and lakhs of his followers became Buddhists.

At Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, Dr B. R. Ambedkar and several lakh people embraced Buddhism together. Counts of those who took the deeksha with him run from more than 3.8 lakh to six lakh. The next day Ambedkar set out the movement's foundations and answered its critics.

The day is remembered every year as Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din. On the anniversary, millions gather at Deekshabhoomi.

They marched to put Ambedkar's name on a university.

The demand to rename Marathwada University after Dr B. R. Ambedkar was met, from July 1978, with attacks on Dalits, and the government withdrew its renaming resolution. In November 1979 Jogendra Kawade, a professor in Nagpur, led a long march towards Aurangabad. Thousands were arrested before it began, and lakhs more courted arrest. The march was stopped after 11 boys were killed in police firing at Nagpur.

The struggle went on until the renaming of 1994.

After twenty years, Ambedkar's name went on the university.

On 14 January 1994, Chief Minister Sharad Pawar announced that Marathwada University would be renamed Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University. The movement had asked for a new name, a Namantar. What it won was a Naamvistar, an extension, with Marathwada kept beside Ambedkar.

It was a partial victory, won after two decades of marches, arrests and violence against Dalits, among them the long march from Nagpur in 1979.

Four young Dalits were flogged in public. Gujarat's Dalits answered by walking.

On 11 July 2016, vigilantes publicly flogged four Dalit youths in Una for skinning a dead cow. The Una Dalit Atyachar Ladat Samiti answered with the Dalit Asmita Yatra, a 400 km march from Ahmedabad, joined by Muslims, that reached Una on Independence Day. There the marchers pledged never again to pick up dead cattle, and Radhika Vemula, mother of Rohit Vemula, raised the flag.

Its example inspired Chalo Udupi.

"Food is our choice, Land is our right." That was the slogan, as Asianet reported it.

Inspired by the Una protests, thousands from 166 Dalit, Left and progressive organisations walked from Bengaluru to Udupi, condemning the killing of a man by self-styled cow vigilantes. They left Freedom Park on 4 October 2016 and ended with a large rally on 9 October, where Jignesh Mevani spoke.

The marchers asked for five acres of land for every Dalit family. Mevani reportedly gave the Udupi mutt two months to end separate seating at meals.